Improving Girls’ Enrollment and Learning through Youth Clubs and Community Support

Participation in clubs or associations has been shown to improve girls’ academic performance as well as life skills. Impact(Ed) has helped its partner schools across Africa develop more than 1,190 girls’ clubs and associations, aimed at getting and keeping more girls in school, with positive results.

At a primary school in Nigeria, the creation of a girls’ association through The Discovery Project, funded by the UK government through its Girls' Education Challenge initiative, has led to more girls staying in and entering the school, and more community support for girls’ education and skill development.

"The girls’ association initiative is now trending amongst girls within and girls outside of school -- addressing returnees, creating self-esteem, and promoting personal growth in the form of skill acquisition, safe spaces, increased classroom performance and regular attendance and decreased drop-out rate,” said Marium, a teacher.

Formed as a result of The Discovery Project's community mobilization workshops, girls have been drawn to the mentorship, skills training and assistance they receive from the local women’s association. Through the association, girls learn entrepreneurial skills, such as making skin cream, liquid soap and candles, while mentorship activities focus on their education, building their confidence and discussing career and livelihood options.

“We are happy to get involved, to help our girls as well as boys attain higher and better education,” said one member of the women’s association.

The women’s association also works to bring out-of-school girls back through girls’ association activities. They recently held an awareness forum to engage the community on the importance of girls’ education. Through the forum, they identified 23 girls who were no longer coming to school and helped nearly a dozen of those girls join the girls’ association and return to school.

Most importantly, girls’ academic performance has improved at the school from 25 percent grade point average overall in 2013 to 63 percent in 2016. Since the intervention of The Discovery Project, more girls at the school have transitioned to junior secondary schools, with 27 girls successfully transitioning in 2015 and 62 girls successfully transitioning in 2016.